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Taoiseach Leo Varadkar speaking to reporters at COP28 Lauren Boland/The Journal

No plans for Ireland to commit to further cuts in methane emissions at COP28 - Taoiseach

Varadkar said current targets need to be met before the government could be “serious and honest” about upping ambition.

THE TAOISEACH HAS said that the Irish government has no plans to commit to any additional targets to cut methane emissions at COP28 given that existing domestic targets are already not being met.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar arrived at the COP28 climate conference this morning alongside around 160 other world leaders — though neither US President Joe Biden nor Chinese President Xi Jinping are in attendance.

The annual conferences have been historically slow to agree on any major commitments to work towards dramatically reducing fossil fuels, which are responsible for a significant proportion of the greenhouse gas emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere and pushing temperatures upwards, but there are hopes that this year might bring some progress, including on methane.

Ireland signed up to a pledge at COP26 in Glasgow two years ago on cutting methane emissions by 30% but that hasn’t been realised in emissions targets set at home.

Speaking to reporters today, the Taoiseach said he believes current targets need to be met before the government could be “serious and honest” about looking towards higher ambition.

“I think at the moment our objective is to meet the commitments that we’ve made in relation to emissions. At the moment, we’re not reaching our targets when it comes to greenhouse gases, and that’s CO2 as well as methane, so I think we have to put the absolute focus on meeting the targets we’ve made already,” Varadkar said.

“We are making a lot of progress in a lot of areas — the scale up of renewables in the electricity sector in Ireland is something I’m very proud of, it’s something that’s really making some great progress; we’re also retrofitting about 30,000 old homes in Ireland every year — and we are now seeing some progress in agriculture: emissions falling, fertiliser use falling.

“What I want to do is to meet the targets that we’ve set, and only when we’re on trajectory to do that, can we be serious and honest about higher targets.”

Varadkar is in Dubai for a two-day summit of heads of states and governments taking place at the outset of the two-week conference.

He arrived in the UAE yesterday and visited Al Ain Farms, an Irish-run dairy farm in Abu Dhabi.

Food systems and agriculture are among important topics up for discussion at the conference given their role in influencing and being influenced by climate change and biodiversity.

In Ireland, the agriculture sector was responsible for 38.4% tonnes of emissions in 2022, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which is driven by methane from livestock and nitrous oxides from nitrogen fertilisers.

An investigation by The Guardian and DeSmog published this week reported that meat companies and lobby groups were planning a significant presence at COP28 to try to promote an image of meat production as sustainable and environmentally beneficial.

Asked whether the Taoiseach or other Irish ministers are meeting with meat industry groups at this COP or promoting Ireland’s meat industry in meetings with other countries, the Taoiseach said: “Not at this meeting but one of the good things about COP is it brings everyone together. It’s governments, it’s NGOs, who engage in a lot of lobbying, and industry, which engages in a lot of lobbying too.”

“We need industry because if we’re going to change from fossil fuel generated electricity to renewables, those companies need to make that transition too, and when it comes to changing the way our food system works, it’s actually some of the big agricultural companies that are going to make those changes too.”

He said that “some of the big food producers in Ireland are already setting a target to reduce their emissions by 30%, which is higher than the government’s target for agriculture” and that he does not think people should “see industry as being the enemy – they’re not, we can’t make this transition without them”.

“But that doesn’t mean that we pander to them either. We can’t do that,” he added.

Ireland’s contribution to a new Loss and Damage Fund established yesterday is to come out of money that had already been earmarked for climate finance.

The government has already pledged to contribute €225 million to international climate finance each year. Climate finance is a term used to encapsulate funding for a broad range of measures, from efforts to try to prevent temperatures from rising to safeguards to protect people and places affected by climate change.

The adoption of the fund was one of the first decisions to come out of the COP, which began yesterday, and follows months of deliberations about where the money would come from and who it would go to. The purpose of the fund is to collect contributions from developed countries for helping more vulnerable that are already suffering from the impacts of the climate crisis.

Among countries to have contributed so far are the United Arab Emirates and Germany, which have each pledged $100 million; the UK with around $50.6 million, the US at $17.5 million, and Japan at $10 million.

The Taoiseach intends to announce the value of Ireland’s contribution tomorrow when he delivers a statement to the conference.

“I think it’s clear that insufficient progress has been made in taking climate action,” he said today.

“It is the existential existential crisis of our time and we have to be the generation that reverses the tide on climate change and biodiversity loss.” 

The two-day summit for world leaders is usually marked by a flurry of public declarations of support for climate action as countries to convince each other of their climate credentials.

134 countries, including Ireland, have signed up to a Food and Agriculture Declaration today saying that they will increase their efforts to integrate food systems into plans to reduce emissions while also supporting farmers and vulnerable food producers through funding, infrastructure and early warning systems for extreme weather events.

The UAE released a declaration on global climate finance, urging leaders to deliver on promises made in previous years to provide $100 billion of climate finance for developing countries.

But behind the scenes, an early negotiating draft says that “despite overall progress on mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation and support, [countries] are not collectively on track to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement” — the deal struck eight years ago to try to keep temperatures within manageable levels.

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    Mute jiminybillybob
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    Dec 1st 2023, 3:06 PM

    Wierd that the comments are open on such an issue.
    An opportunity for green extremists to rant about how they want to send Ireland back to pre industrial times.

    238
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    Mute Brendan O'Brien
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    Dec 1st 2023, 3:31 PM

    @jiminybillybob: The people who rant on posts like this are invariably those who believe that their feelings and dim intuitions override scientific evidence and the evidence of our own eyes as to what is happening in the world.

    42
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    Mute Fintan Stack
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    Dec 1st 2023, 6:46 PM

    @Brendan O’Brien: that’s a sweeping assumption, and ignorance.

    45
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    Mute David Patrick
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    Dec 1st 2023, 3:15 PM

    €225 million that could be spent on housing!

    168
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    Mute Michael McGrath
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    Dec 1st 2023, 3:24 PM

    The mistruths being put out here about agriculture is scandalous. Cattle do not affect climate they are part of a 10 year biogenic cycle that has been purposely erroneously miscalculated over 100 years which makes it much worse than it actually is.Agriculture can’t export it’s carbon with its produce like heavy and consumer industry can, it’s grass, hedgegrow and woodland offsets have been robbed off them to hand to the likes of Google,Intel, Facebook and the like so in short the whole industry is been made a patsy for climate change. Also the worst nitrate polluters of our waterways by far are our govt via our county councils almost non existent water treatment process which involves solid and liquid separation and the liquid is pumped into our waterways, it’s a disgrace. COP is just the biggest virtue signalling show on earth where the elite blame the plebs for all the world’s ills, they are so unattached from the reality of the world including our own “finest” that it beggars belief

    180
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    Mute Staker Wallace
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    Dec 1st 2023, 4:04 PM

    @Michael McGrath: Yep. Instead of depending on multinational tech and pharma companies, Ireland should have developed our own indigenous industries a lot more.
    Look at Denmark and all the farm machinery companies and computerised animal ventalition and feeding systems they have.
    All we’ll be left with is the data centres when the multinationals decide to move on.

    129
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    Mute Staker Wallace
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    Dec 1st 2023, 4:11 PM

    @Staker Wallace: ^systems companies

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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Dec 1st 2023, 4:38 PM

    @Michael McGrath: Do you have any data to back that up?

    9
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    Mute Ducks Prefer Clean Water
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    Dec 1st 2023, 11:28 PM

    @Michael McGrath: totally disagree, intel and some tech companies covering maybe 300 acres at most AND employing thousands of jobs, while farms employ 2-3 people !!?
    Dairy farms around me, kildare/meath border are spreading manure in extremely wet land beside tributaries & rivers with no regard for the river water quality. A lot of these 3rd & 4th generation farmers who INHERITED the land are no guardians as they should be!
    No small woodlands been planted in my area in 25 years, butchering hedgerows with no regard for wildlife or biodiversity. Not all farmers but far too many !

    4
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    Mute no no no
    Favourite no no no
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    Dec 1st 2023, 4:08 PM

    Representatives of the 2 largest polluters not taking part. Sounds correct, let the small countries take care of it….

    83
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Dec 1st 2023, 4:45 PM

    @no no no: The US has a delegation there, headed up by Kamala Harris.

    Don’t know about the Chinese.

    8
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    Mute Donald Hegarty
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    Dec 1st 2023, 5:21 PM

    @ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: Headed up by Kamala Harris that in it’s self me a joke, she doesn’t know what day of the week it is. She’s a waste of space.

    56
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    Mute David O Brien
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    Dec 1st 2023, 3:43 PM

    Plenty of methane coming out of his mouth.

    113
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    Mute Paul Gorry
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    Dec 1st 2023, 6:27 PM

    @David O Brien: like your ma

    6
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    Mute David O Brien
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    Dec 2nd 2023, 6:10 PM

    @Paul Gorry: yours too

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    Mute Éanna o Sca
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    Dec 2nd 2023, 11:49 PM

    @Paul Gorry: here he is again

    1
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    Mute Kevin O Brien
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    Dec 1st 2023, 3:11 PM

    FFG who refused to expel the ambassador must be delighted with the Gaza extermination resumption this morning will Fianna Fail Michael Martin be taking another visit to Israel to break bread with the war crims

    75
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    Mute David
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    Dec 1st 2023, 4:36 PM

    @Kevin O Brien: I listened this morning to the excuse the zionist regime used, hamas fired a rocket and broke the terms of the ceasefire, this after 2 children were shot dead by snipers, one an 8 year old, while his friend tries to save him the snipers fire at him too. The other boy a 15 year old, both were playing on the street when deliberately murdered by zionist criminals. Not to mention the regime were systematically bombing and murdering right through the “ceasefire”.

    53
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    Mute tom byrne
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    Dec 1st 2023, 5:57 PM

    the amount of carbon for these people to be transportedfrom all over the world for gods sake, surely thesethingscan be done online,the cost of flying taoiseach and tanaiste all over the place , surely this money would be better used to help the health service here. what a pure waste.

    39
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    Mute David
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    Dec 1st 2023, 6:41 PM

    @tom byrne: Do as I say not as I do.

    26
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    Mute hi from heaven
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    Dec 1st 2023, 2:51 PM

    Farmers buying cheap land in Donegal mayo Leitrim in order for their lu/ha to be below allowable quantities, but in reality they are only farming (polluting)what is around the original farmyard..
    Has happened beside me where dairy farmer who has circa 300 cows bought 65acres 50 miles away for this reason and said as much

    21
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    Mute hi from heaven
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    Dec 1st 2023, 2:52 PM

    @hi from heaven: 65acres is mountain type land

    11
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    Mute Ken Mc Carthy
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    Dec 1st 2023, 4:34 PM

    @hi from heaven: yeah ….thats widespread last couple of years…..tis crazy carry on. A great big field ( 28acres) behind me made €10K per acre earlier in year….. rubbish land / would’ve been lucky to reach €5K p/ acre two years ago. ….. just lying idle……. nothing has/ or will be done with it but the purchaser now has a 28acre ‘cushion’ to ensue he can nitrate like a mad thing on his own land.

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    Mute Thesaltyurchin
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    Dec 1st 2023, 5:59 PM

    @Ken Mc Carthy: Traditional forms of food production will end eventually. It’s just a matter of time.

    4
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    Mute he didnt take the 120k because he already got it s
    Favourite he didnt take the 120k because he already got it s
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    Dec 1st 2023, 9:19 PM

    I wonder what the emissions are for all the private jets and motorcades in UAE over the 2 days while they talk about how to screw us over more and more

    29
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    Mute Thesaltyurchin
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    Dec 1st 2023, 4:42 PM

    “I think it’s clear that insufficient progress has been made in taking climate action,”… That’s because your all spineless in the face of the private sector. There is only so much the public will be able to do really.

    21
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    Mute Michael o connor
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    Dec 1st 2023, 10:58 PM

    A lot more methane from Fianna Gael now there’s an election looming!!

    11
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    Mute Paul Gorry
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    Dec 1st 2023, 5:47 PM

    It’s of the utmost importance that Mary Toilet and her gang apologise for using that photograph in the Dail, it was really disturbing

    11
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    Mute David
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    Dec 1st 2023, 6:40 PM

    @Paul Gorry: Did you get to see it?

    5
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    Mute he didnt take the 120k because he already got it s
    Favourite he didnt take the 120k because he already got it s
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    Dec 1st 2023, 9:16 PM

    Good on ireland pledging to give double what other countries are, but sure keep the cows and screw the taxpayers even more, il have my vaseline ready for the tax man

    11
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    Mute Eric Gaffney
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    Dec 1st 2023, 5:52 PM

    Bunch of grifters.

    13
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    Mute Feargal De Cantuin
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    Dec 1st 2023, 8:46 PM

    Pleased for them but Genocide resumes in Gaza and comments are closed. Journal check your moral compass! Or better yet rebrand as ears closed

    6
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